Active Semantic Relations in Layered Enterprise Architecture Development

Abstract

Enterprise Architecture (EA) metamodels align an organisation’s business, information and technology resources so that these assets best meet the organisation’s purpose. The Layered EA Development (LEAD) Ontology enhances EA practices by a metamodel with layered metaobjects as its building blocks interconnected by semantic relations. Each metaobject connects to another metaobject by two semantic relations in opposing directions, thus highlighting how each metaobject views other metaobjects from its perspective. While the resulting two directed graphs reveal all the multiple pathways in the metamodel, more desirable would be to have one directed graph that focusses on the dependencies in the pathways. Towards this aim, using CG-FCA (where CG refers to Conceptual Graph and FCA to Formal Concept Analysis) and a LEAD case study, we determine an algorithm that elicits the active as opposed to the passive semantic relations between the metaobjects resulting in one directed graph metamodel. We also identified the general applicability of our algorithm to any metamodel that consists of triples of objects with active and passive relations.

Generating Layered Enterprise Architectures with Conceptual Structures

“…The stages are identification of active semantic relations, resolution of cycles, then the introduction of layering. The variables The initial steps mirror an earlier study, whereby an active direction graph is created by determining the active relations and resolving any unwanted semantic cycles [2]. Subsequently, LEAD layering was introduced by examining and modifying the compositions of the supremum (the top-most formal concept) and infimum (the bottom-most formal concept) in the FCL.…”

“…The concepts are then presented in a Formal Concept Lattice (FCL), which visualises the mathematical rigour of FCA. CG-FCA was augmented with an algorithm to create a graph of active verbs that supports a chain of command, highlighting objects that act upon other objects [2]. However, this approach took little account of LEAD's layers, adversely impacting the readability of the active direction graph.…”